Sheena Asibey
"With Cortland, I’m ahead of the game. I’m prepared, and I’m ready to go."
It would not be too much of a stretch to say that Sheena Asibey’s SUNY Cortland education has been shaped in significant ways by Chuck the Chicken.
As a first-year student, Sheena was searching for a major when she signed up for the Adventure Activities course in the Physical Education Department. In the course, future physical education teachers learn activities designed to build group cooperation, and the best way to learn them is to do them. A favorite was a game called Chuck the Chicken, which involves throwing a rubber chicken really far and lots of running in circles.
Silly? Sure. Irresistible? You bet.
“I was into it,” says Sheena, a junior physical education major who plays middle hitter on an excellent Red Dragons volleyball team. “I had fun. I was motivated. And I was enjoying what I was doing. It literally just drew me in.”
She was drawn in to a physical education program that’s one of the finest in the country, combining rigorous course work with lots of hands-on experience in the field, all under the guidance of some of the top faculty in the profession. “The professors are great,” Sheena says. “They push us to do our best all the time.”
Sheena has a scholarship through Cortland’s Urban Recruitment of Educators (C.U.R.E.) program, which is preparing her for the unique challenges she’ll face teaching in an urban school after she graduates.
Right now, she’s feeling pretty confident of her ability to tackle those challenges. “With Cortland, I’m ahead of the game,” she says. “I’m prepared, and I’m ready to go.”
